


hashish eaters

by thefudge



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: F/M, Intimacy, Mind Manipulation, a kind of baptism, ost: sneaker pimps - 6 underground
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:35:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25731469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: It’s so easy to get what you want, she thinks. It’s the easy part that makes it terrifying. Axel/Allison (post 2x07)
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves/Axel, Axel/Allison Hargreeves
Comments: 16
Kudos: 55





	hashish eaters

**Author's Note:**

> anyway, here's wonderwall

Allison slumps in the swivel chair with her whole body and the room spins. Spinning, she does not see the quiet, sulking Swede in the corner of the salon. She thinks she’s alone. She slips out of her heels and raises one knee to her chest and rubs the swollen smallness of her foot. She does not sense his eyes on her, on the smallness. 

Allison rests her chin on her knee. It’s been a long, long day.

She had to get away from home, from Ray, who has been trying very hard not to be afraid of her.

It’s so easy to get what you want, she thinks. It’s the easy part that makes it terrifying.

They could stand like that forever - assassin and target - one oblivious to the other’s presence, but Axel has learned the hard way how quickly he can become a target himself. He moves out of the afternoon shadow into full view, gun cocked to his side.

Allison lifts her head. For a moment, she doesn’t understand what she sees: a white man, peroxide blond, in a black women’s beauty salon. It’s almost funny. Her throat feels ticklish with laughter.

“You’re not actually blond, are you?” are the first words that come out of her mouth. And she realizes she’s right. His roots give it away.

The Swede stares her down.

“I know hair, trust me,” she continues, unperturbed. “You’re a dark blond, at the very least. Possibly a brunette.”

His lips twitch slightly in sinister acknowledgement.

It feels completely disconnected from reality, talking to him this way, but she can’t stop herself from asking. “Why did you have it dyed?”

Axel cocks his head to the side, letting a few blond strands fall over his forehead. “When they hire the Swedes, they expect the Swedes.”

His voice startles her, its fullness like honey in a jar.

“I understand. It’s all about image,” she replies, trying to keep the conversation going. “I used to live my life like that, but I got tired of the performance.”

Axel looks her up and down. Her mustard dress has mottled and creased around her hips and her stockings are frayed. She’s still got one knee up and he can see into the dark hollow between her legs. Only then does Allison realize she has not put her foot down. 

“Is this not also a performance?” he rasps, and his accent is tinged with disdain. Or maybe that’s just how he talks.

Allison doesn’t like it.

“Did your brothers also dye their hair?” she asks.

She shouldn’t have brought them up so quickly, but she’s always liked to grab the bull by the horns.

She can see his teeth straining against his jaw, chomping at the bit, trying to get out of his mouth. There’s something very proviso about him, something quite unreal.

“You could have done it any number of ways,” he says, voice flat. “But you made me do it. You made me kill my brother. Why?”

Allison blinks.

He expects a reason. 

She wants to tell him that he's done much worse in his miserable life. You reap what you sow. 

But there is no side-stepping the sincerity of the question, the pain at the core of it. And her cruelty.

“Because I wanted to,” she answers truthfully. “I wanted you to suffer. I wanted you to live with the deed your entire life. It made me feel good.”

Once the words are out, she feels lighter. As if she has rumored herself.

“Whenever that power takes over me, I feel insatiable,” she adds as an after-thought, but not as an apology. “Maybe I always am.”

The Swede regards her intently. She does not read hostility in his eyes. She does not read anything.

“Then why haven’t you rumored me yet?” he asks.

Allison looks at her hands. There’s still blood under her fingernails. She lets them fall in her lap.

“I don’t really know. It’s been a long day. I’m tired of…”

_Everything_.

“I could make it all go away,” he says with mock-gentility, lifting his gun.

Allison snorts. “I know. And you’d get away with it too. You could just walk out of here and tell white folks what you did and they’d shake your hand and give you a medal.”

Axel considers this for a moment. “I’d kill them too.”

Allison can’t help cracking a smile. “You’re sweet.”

And she means it. Like a one track pony.

“You could rumor me to shoot myself,” he says, lifting the gun towards her.

She should be afraid, or alert, at the very least. He might actually kill her before she can open her mouth.

But time has worn her down. Time and love both.

“Do you _want_ me to do that?” she asks, leaning back in the chair. “Do you feel so awful for what you did to your brother?”

His hand trembles slightly. “I don’t want to die.”

“Then what do you want?”

He hesitates for a moment.

“I want to forget. I want you to rumor me to forget.”

Allison parts her lips. “You…you want to forget that you murdered him? You’ll still wonder where he is, what happened to him.”

He shakes his head. “No. Make me forget about my brother. Make me forget about both of them.”

She frowns. “But –”

But you can’t, she wants to say. She knows about trying to forget. It’s not the solution to family.

“I won’t beg,” he says, still pointing the gun at her. “You owe me this much.”

_Do I?_

There’s something pathetic about his conviction, yet also supremely alluring.

No one really wants to be rumored. But he does. And that relieves her of the responsibility.

Allison relaxes. She leans even further back in her chair. She feels weightless with anticipation.

_All right._

“I heard a rumor…that you got down on your knees and you put the gun on the floor.”

His eyes become brilliantly vacant.

Like a spring toy, he unwinds.

Allison watches him kneel gracefully. He places the gun neatly on the tiles.

“Good.”

She feels a cold, Nordic air in her lungs as she tells him to come crawling towards her.

Axel is still graceful.

He creeps towards her like a sleepy feline.

Allison knows that a rumor travels very far. She doesn’t know exactly where this ends. Her power pushes her beyond carefully-drawn lines. They're out of the perimeter. 

She reaches out with a trembling hand. The Swede puts his cheek in her palm. His skin is warm and dry. She did not tell him to do that. But once a rumor is out, it never dies. He nuzzles her palm, inhaling her scent. He kisses her fingers clumsily. They slip against his lips.

Allison runs her hand over his face and combs his bleached blond hair.

She remembers Reginald reading to them from an encyclopedia when they were very young.

_An assassin is a stupefied killer,_ he used to tell them. The etymology was Arabic, from the word “hashishin”, or “hashish eater”. These men were part of an exclusive order that drugged and hypnotized them and promised them paradise and then sent them out to kill their targets.

_Until_ , she thinks, _you become addicted to your next hit._

Axel has lowered his head in her lap. He kisses her skirt tenderly. Shyly, he lifts that skirt up and kisses the stocking underneath. Her thighs chafe. The warmth of his mouth makes her rub them against each other. He nestles his head between her legs and wishes for forgetfulness. Allison closes her eyes and tips her head back. She raises her hips towards his mouth, but he never kisses flesh. There are layers between them, no matter how much his tongue worries the fabric, and that somehow makes it all the more wonderful.

“I heard a rumor…” she says, breathless and helpless with power. A small moan escapes her mouth. “I heard a rumor that you forgot about your brothers. You forgot you had family. You forgot who you are. You are alone.”

Axel groans against her cunt. She has given him more than he deserves.

The weights fall off.

He is alone.

Allison drags her foot lightly against his waist. She comes quietly, hand over her mouth, as he buries himself in anonymity.

Curious onlookers wonder what that black woman did to that white man that he came out of the salon looking like a newborn.

And even as they judge her, they feel as if they’ve missed out on something essential. Something they will never get back.

Allison closes shop after her and slips the keys in her pocket.

They all follow her with their eyes.

They listen to the click of her heels.

Axel stands in the middle of traffic, knowing that he has left paradise. 


End file.
